Our Car Buying Journey

I mentioned last week how frustrating I find car buying and promised details when we finally purchased a new car.

This saga started three years ago. That was when I first entertained the thought of buying a new car. I was mostly just dabbling, doing some internet research and test driving anything that was offering an incentive to do so. (ah! The good ole days!) Two years ago I got much more serious. I decided to go in the car direction, and I wanted something very quiet. An “old lady car” as I’ve been calling it. At the time I thought I might like to move up in class, so I test drove some pretty pricey (well to me anyway) vehicles. And they were all a lot noisier than the Santa Fe SUV I’ve been driving. After a few months of looking I became discouraged. Why buy something new that is twice as much money and sounds worse than what I am currently driving?

So I stopped looking.

This year I knew it was time to make a decision and buy a car. I had dithered enough.

Something that helped was I decide to buy another Santa Fe if I could not find anything reasonably priced for the money being asked for the vehicle. I test drove a new Santa Fe and was pleasantly surprised with all the new do-dads that became standard with the redesign two (?) years ago. I knew I would be perfectly happy with the Santa Fe if nothing else panned out. I was back to looking for an SUV.

After reading Edmunds and US News and World Report for their recommendations, pricing, ratings and comparisons, we set out on a search with four vehicles in mind: the aforementioned Santa Fe, a Toyota Highlander, the Mazda CX-9 and the Ford Edge. We would look at a Nissan Murano if none of those worked out or before circling back to the Santa Fe.

As I mentioned before the Santa Fe has some nice upgrades from the model I am driving. The reviews knocked it as a stiff-ride, but I honestly did not feel the bumps in the road. I do know my current Santa Fe got worse for road noise and handling as it aged, so that was a concern to me. As the least expensive of the vehicles we looked at it definitely stayed on my list. I knew what I was getting and felt it was worth the money. The Hyundai warranty cannot be beat.

The Toyota Highlander has a super spiffy interior with the best upgrades of all the SUVs we looked at. It felt luxurious. It had great reviews for noise and handling, but driving it I felt like it the chipmunks under the hood were working far too hard to accelerate onto the thruway. Even accelerating at a stop light was loud. I felt every bump and ding we road over. Since this was the most expensive of the lot, it was out as soon as we finished the drive.

The Mazda CX-9 was a wonderful vehicle. It drove beautifully, handled the road bumps very well and was a very quiet ride. This vehicle had the least amount of under the hood noise of any of the vehicles we test drove. Never once did I feel I was going to have to get out and feed the squirrels under the hood.

We were so interested in the car we decided to talk numbers. It started off fairly poorly when we wanted one with a sunroof (does not seem to exist) and would not pay the extra $2K for a DVD player in back that we would never use. They finally decided they could find one when the dealership owner would give use his (still considered a new car since it was never registered) but since he had “1 or 2 thousand” miles on the car, and we would lose those miles on our warranty, my husband wanted a better deal. As soon as they agreed to my husband’s extra $2K off, I knew (and said out loud), “They’ll just take it off the trade in”… and boy did they ever!

Very long story short we did not buy this vehicle. We have access to the deal auction sites so we knew they were full of baloney especially after they showed us their “comparables”: a lower trim package with 2 wheel drive vs our top trim packs and AWD. What they showed us was worth almost $2,500 less in trade in than our car, AND they lowballed the lower package offer to boot! We were about $3K apart in trade in value.

So, a few days later we went off to Ford to test drive the Edge. We liked the car very much. The hood noise was slight. Not as quiet as the Mazda but nothing out of the ordinary either. The ride got poor reviews for stiff but I tell ya, this was the quietest vehicle I have ever test driven… and I have driven some pretty pricey stuff in the past.

After our Mazda experience we were a bit gun-shy. We decided to talk numbers. The first thing we were asked is if we belong to any clubs, work anywhere where they are offered a Ford discount, etc., etc. My husband jokingly said, “Not unless you count children of retirees from the Chicago Ford stamping plant.” The salesman (who had been the sale manager at another dealership for 10+ years) perked up and after asking a lot of questions and after confirming with the dealerships sales manager felt that we would qualify. Seems Ford workers and their spouses qualify for a nice discount. The Ford-A program they called it. My husband did explain that his dad was deceased and his parents had divorced. That did not seem to matter as his mom was still alive. The Ford benefit extends to children, grandchildren (that started 4 years ago) and siblings as long as the worker or the worker’s spouse is still alive. I’m pretty sure there were a few more details, but that seemed to be most of the story.

They gave us a number to call to get some pin number to qualify for the discount. Since they gave use the wrong number, my husband decided to google for the correct number and found out you can get the pin online. He called his mom, she gave him his father’s start date, and SSN and … “we are sorry, there is an error”.

Hmmm Hubby tried again.

Nope.

He calls Ford.

Turns out that his father’s second wife is the one that was the surviving spouse. My husband would have still gotten the discount through her except she had also passed away.

That was a question they did not ask at the dealership and we didn’t volunteer the information either not realizing it was relevant.

Ut oh. Now what? Will the deal fall through?

My husband decided as long as they offered us X-plan pricing (preferred pricing given to business customers of Ford) we’d still take the vehicle. We didn’t even have to ask for X-plan, it was offered.

So, tomorrow morning bright and early we will be the new owners of a Ford Edge. While not our first choice it was a fairly close second. And, the difference in dealership operations was night and day. We never felt we were being given a hardsell at the dealership. And, it isn’t like it is a small place either. They are one of the largest car dealers in NYS.

All in all it was not fun for me to buy a new car. That’s so sad. It should be a pleasure not a punishment to purchase something new. I realize my search was a tad extended because I could not make up my mind. And the Mazda salesperson could very well be an anomaly, but I feel wiped out after this search.

I hope your car buying experience is pleasurable and inexpensive.

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